“And I haven’t even mentioned jewellery yet, the earliest examples
of which keep getting pushed back in time: they currently stand at
about 75,000 years ago, and maybe as much as 100,000 years ago. At one
site in South Africa, we even have the first evidence of style as we
know it, with a shift in the way shell beads were strung together over
time. Beads aren’t clothing in the strict sense, but they are a kind
of fashion, so although we can’t be sure exactly who wore the first
clothes or when, it’s clear that the history of human adornment does
go back, in Hadley’s words, “a very, very, very long time ago”.”